Banner Ads – The Ripple Effect

Nobody clicks on banner ads anymore. Independent research shows that a decent banner ad will yield only 1 click per 1,000 impressions. That means if you blow through your marketing budget buying 1 Million impressions, you are still only going to get 1,000 clicks to your site. So banner ads are a waste of time, resources and money, right? Not so fast. Say hello to View Thru Booking.

The concept behind a view thru booking is simple: just because someone does not click on you banner, does not mean they did not see it. View thru booking then, is the measurement of bookings that come from an online shopper simply seeing your banner.

How it Works: Let’s say company A runs a banner ad on website 123. A user in turn views this ad but does not click on it. Two weeks later, that same user returns to book a flight, hotel stay, etc. Using view through tracking, company A would know that the booking was made by a traveler from website 123.

How to Set It Up: Start by asking your advertising partners to track view thru bookings for you. From here, simply place their tracking code from their ad server on your confirmation page before the campaign goes live. Scatter your banner ads across various sites (staying in the guardrails of your demographic) and monitor your ROI.